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Information Week | Celtics, Nets Score With Unified Communications

While the basketball players from the Boston Celtics and the Brooklyn Nets were getting ready to mix it up on the courts Nov. 28, their senior technology managers, Jay Wessel and Mireille Viau Verna, respectively, were showing different approaches to off-court technology. Their choices illustrate the crux IT finds itself in as 2013 approaches.

Wessel, VP of technology for the Boston Celtics, is a self-described "hardware guy" who is willing to use hosted unified communications services as a backup and expansion supplement, but prefers to be able to walk into his server room on Boston's Causeway Street, next to the TD Garden where the Celtics play, and make sure the system lights are blinking green. Verna, senior director of IT for the Brooklyn Nets, opted for hosted services to build out the technology capabilities for the Nets, in its first season in Brooklyn after moving from its previous New Jersey location.

At a press event hosted by unified communications vendor ShoreTel (both the Celtics and the Nets make extensive use of ShoreTel's products), Wessel and Verna outlined why they selected their particular approaches to technology. Wessel favors the hybrid technology approach, which mixes physical devices with hosted services. Verna went all hosted.